Morning Thanks

Garrison Keillor once said we'd all be better off if we all started the day by giving thanks for just one thing. I'll try.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Sunday Morning Meds--To be blessed

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. . .” Psalm 32:1

It seems to me that this isn’t the first time I’ve typed in
that word as a title. If I go back to
the first psalm, first meditation, I’d see it there, as well.

The word—and what it suggests—remains a treasure. I don’t think you have to be a believer in
Jesus Christ’s redemptive work to aspire to the riches the word suggests. I doubt anyone’s ever done a poll, but my
guess is that a multitude of those who spend their Saturday nights at what America calls
“gaming,” would really love to be blessed,
in their case by what they’d call luck.

But Dame Fortune, in her ancient medieval garb, looked like Megan Fox as long as she was smiling. When she’d turn, she’d morph into
Phyllis Diller.

I believe—and I may be generous here—that everyone from Pope
Francis to the whoever was last week’s serial killer would most likely want, more than
anything, to be “blessed.” I do too. A considerable number of us, like Jacob, would
fake IDs to get it if we sensed we were anywhere in the neighborhood of blessedness. To be
blessed is a condition that most of us believe we know only because its
pursuit dominates our dreams.

Not long ago, we buried a man named Henry. He was devout, but never, ever
self-righteous, always courteous and loving and considerate. I visited him once in the wing of the hospital,
when his wife of sixty years was close to death, very close, I thought. He spoke to her and read to her, even smiled
at her as if she hung on his every word.
Maybe she did.

If those who knew him 24/7 ever saw another side of Henry, I
don’t think I’d like to know. But I’m
enough of a Calvinist to believe he was probably capable of something other than
the grace that radiated from his presence as long as I knew him. I’m sure he carried his own inner demons, fought
his own battles.

When Henry knew his death was imminent, he wrote a note to
his children that all travel costs his geographically dispersed family would
accrue for his funeral should be paid before anyone looked into his
estate. By profession, he’d been a
Professor of Business, and that little note on the bottom of a sheet of paper
was scribbled by an accountant. But it
was also the act of a man who knew he’d been blessed and understood that his
role was to do likewise.

I bring him up only because it seems to me that, through our
lives, most of us know very, very few people to whom we might affix the
description of “being truly blessed.”
Henry was one of those. And I’m
blessed—as all of us were in this community—to have known him.

But how do we get blessed, if, in fact, being blessed can be
somehow obtained? Is there something I
can do, or is it simply a gift, like grace itself?

Psalm 1 begins with the same word as does Psalm 32, but then
it describes the condition of being blessed
by illustrating how the blessed among us conduct their lives, what they do and
don’t. Psalm 32, people say, is more of
a how-to, a maschil, a sermon psalm.

Consider its ways and be wise. Consider its ways and be blessed. Follow its
instructions, if indeed you—or I--can.

“For some of us at least, to be a Calvinist today also means that we will have to work at keeping alive the memories of older sayings and teachings in the hope that there will soon come a day when many others will want to learn such things again.”